I don’t normally post XKCD stuff, not because I don’t think it’s funny, but because I’m pretty much a mathematical retard and it feels like I’m faking it. But this….

Word, bitch, Phantoms like a motherfucker.

While I try to limit the amount of vitriol I spew about work (it’s because once I start I can’t stop, not because I’m trying to be positive or anything), sometimes it builds up to such a point that if I don’t say something here, it will come rocketing out my mouth while I’m actually in the office, and I’m pretty sure you don’t get unemployment benefits if you get fired after telling your boss to go fuck him or herself. I know all about people who get fired for writing about their jobs on the Internet, but really, if I’m not:

a. naming the company I work for,
b. naming the people who work with me, or
c. releasing confidential information,

…then who are they to discipline me? The above are the verboten parts of my employment contract. Unless I violate them, I’m protected by the First Amendment. I told my boss this during a recent monthly one-on-one meeting. When she became my boss, we agreed to defriend one another one Facebook (she’d been my boss once before but then wasn’t for awhile, and it was during this “wasn’t” period that she friended me), and she told me that I should be careful of what I post there.

“What do you mean?” I asked.

“Well, a few months ago, you posted something about how you were unhappy at work, and I just want to warn you about how that can look to people.”

Now. That “few months ago” was months before she became my boss again, so it clearly had nothing to do with her managerial…um…skills. Also, I didn’t violate any of the above rules in my post. It was a Facebook status, no more than a couple of sentences long, and if I remember correctly, I don’t even think it contained any profanity. Which is rare for me, and that’s why I remember it.

I didn’t care that my boss had seen it – after all, she and I were Facebook friends at the time and I was fully aware that as such, she could see what I wrote – but I did care that she was bothering to not only remember it after all these months, but bring it up in what should have been a performance review-type meeting about my current performance as her employee. So I told her that what I wrote on Facebook or anywhere else on the Internet was none of Work’s business. I mentioned the above rules and reminded her that my name on the Internet is different from the name on all my employment stuff, which means that anyone from work with whom I wasn’t actual work and real life friends who happened to find me on the Internet was looking for trouble, and that the company should be far more concerned with their tendency to stalk-and-tell than they should be with any occasional misanthropy I might experience.

I mean, what’s the big fucking deal? Yes, I hate my job sometimes. Yes, I wish I were working somewhere else, too, and with different people, ideally ones who show up to work and actually do their jobs without a crippling inability to understand priorities or the workload of the co-workers struggling to cover their asses. I wish I had management who didn’t play such obvious favorites with people who shouldn’t be trusted with the sharp end of a crayon. I wish I didn’t have to act pleased about being a receptacle for verbal abuse. I wish that someone in charge would talk to me like a grownup for a change, and maybe stop acting like singing show tunes in the office is a professional thing to do. Or at least not act so offended when I refuse to sing, and say “because I don’t work at Chuck E. Cheese” by way of explanation.

The point is that whether your office is more or less stupid than mine, sooner or later, you are going to hate your job. Temporarily probably, permanently I hope not, but as a person who is not a sociopath clinically unable to experience feeling, you will hate your job. And you do have the freedom to say so, whether at happy hour with your friends or on the Internet. Anyone judging you for it – whether this be your current employer or some future employer who can’t get over something you thought years before – is an idiotic asshole.

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About erineph

I'm Erin. I have tattoos and more than one cat. I am an office drone, a music writer, and an erstwhile bartender. I am a cook in the bedroom and a whore in the kitchen. Things I enjoy include but are not limited to zombies, burritos, Cthulhu, Kurt Vonnegut, Keith Richards, accordions, perfumery, and wearing fat pants in the privacy of my own home.